Luxury vinyl tile (LVT) is one of the fastest growing segments in the flooring market taking share from laminates, true hardwood and other vinyl segments. These tiles and planks are typically composed of a highly filled base layer situated beneath a decorative film, which is in turn covered by a clear wear layer. Key performance requirements of materials for LVT wear layers include scratch/abrasion resistance, optical clarity, flexibility, correct coefficient of friction (COF), and dimensional stability.
The most common polymer used in LVT wear layers is plasticized polyvinyl chloride (P-PVC). However, growing environmental concerns centered on plasticizer emissions (both during manufacture and end-use) and the recyclability and reprocessing issues of P-PVC have urged manufacturers to look for replacement materials for P-PVC. Another environmental issue with PVC LVTs is that when the material burns, hazardous halogen-containing products of combustion, such as hydrogen chloride, can be formed.
Polypropylene/inorganic particle-based blend compositions have been disclosed for various industrial applications including resilient flooring. However, such materials fail to provide a good balance of the essential properties for a wear layer, including scratch/abrasion resistance, reduced migrating moiety, optical clarity and adhesion properties.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a material that can be used for a wear layer in LVT resilient flooring coverings, which is halogen-free to eliminate the potential for formation of hydrogen chloride when the floor covering is burned, does not contain a liquid plasticizer, is recyclable, and provides a PVC-free material that has an improved balance of properties including reduced migrating moieties, and high scratch/abrasion resistance, optical clarity and adhesion properties. These needs and others have been met by the following invention.